It's Monday! What are you reading?

It's Monday! What are you reading? is a meme hosted by Sheila at Book Journeys. Jen Vincent over at Teach Mentor Texts and Kellee Moye from Unleashing Readers decided to put a children's and YA spin on it and they invite anyone with an interest to join in. You can participate by creating your post then visit one of their sites to add your site. Finally, visit at least three participant blogs and comment to spread the love.

If you want to know more about what I am reading, visit me at my Goodreads shelf. Images via Goodreads unless otherwise noted.

The Past Week: 

I read and reviewed Everything You Wanted to Know About Indians But Were Afraid to Ask by Anton Treuer. It's a great book, especially for educators, and it provides quality information about American Indians.

Another adult nonfiction title that I read was What It Is by Lynda Barry. The last book I read by her was about creating visual art and this one was about writing. It had some fantastic prompts and included pieces of writing that appeared to be memoir. They made for good mentor pieces.

I also read and reviewed Photos Framed: A Fresh Look at the World's Most Memorable Photographs, Mysterious Patterns: Finding Fractals in Nature, and Making Magic Windows: Creating Papel Picado/Cut-Paper Art with Carmen Lomas Garza. They were all excellent nonfiction books. As I typed that I realized that most of my reading this week was nonfiction. Hmmm.

And here are some of the fiction books that I read. Mama and Papa Have a Store was so interesting to me because I had heard of Chinese immigrants to Spanish speaking countries only in the past year. That is a part of history that I didn't know much about. In this memoir picture book we see a family from Asia that is making a new life in Guatemala City. Snapshots from the Wedding really reminded me of Carmen Lomas Garza's Family Pictures. They are fun little slices of life. My Name is Gabito was a nice picture book biography of Gabriel Garcia Marquez. 

The Coming Week:

I was also still listening to Octavian Nothing (still a struggle) and reading The Fishermen which is so much more than I expected. I don't quite understand why Octavian Nothing is considered young adult especially when I am reading both of these at the same time. The main character of The Fishermen is only nine and the book is definitely for adults so it can't be simply that Octavian is a young person. Octavian seems to narrate in a very adult style so I am puzzled really especially when I find it so difficult to stay interested and the language is so formal. 

I started the graphic novel Strange Fruit Vol 1: Uncelebrated Narratives from Black History today too. I just picked up Crazy Horse's Girlfriend yesterday and am excited to start that soon. I'll probably read a few picture books along the way also.

Reading Challenge Update

Diversity on the Shelf/Diverse Books - 67/100

Goodreads - 125/520

#MustRead2015 - 15/53

Diversity Reading Challenge - 8/12

Around the World With Books 2015